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It’s been awhile since I’ve had a chance to post, because I’ve been surprisingly busy lately. In my quest for viable options to plug the holes in my little money-making vessel (more a tugboat than a schooner in the best of seas), I came across the idea of search engine evaluation. I think it was actually on a library list-serv that I heard about Leapforce, and after doing quite a bit of research on what initially sounded vaguely scammy, I finally decided it sounded legit enough to at least give it a shot. The idea is that after submitting a resume, reading through a 100ish page “general guidelines” on how to analyze web page utility and taking a tedious 2-part exam (you’re eliminated immediately if you don’t pass either part of the exam), one is qualified as a Leapforce Search Engine Evaluator. After about a week of reading and URL simulation, I passed the exams and was hired on as an independent contractor. That means I can work as much or as little as I want, from home. It’s not something I would want to do longterm or 40 hours a week, but is so far a pretty flexible part time solution.

What compells me about this work is its similarity to many aspects of librarianship. It reminds me of the types of queries I would get when I worked as a virtual librarian for OCLC’s QuestionPoint service (basically analyzing user intent and determining the best web resources for an information request). From what I can tell from the comments of other evaluators, they are discerning information professionals. Presumably the tests weed out the riff raff. Anyway, my little proactive experiment means I’m working a little more than usual…

I couldn’t resist the drama of this title of an article published on insidehighered.com. The “maelstrom” in this case refers to a possible conflict of interest between a new OCLC policy that sets to place a notice of WorldCat terms and conditions in each record and the libraries that created said records in the first place. The contention is that such conditions could potentially threaten the free use of records for purposes such as print-on-demand services and individual library revenue sources.

The online bibliographic world is turning increasingly open source with entities such as OpenLibrary. The idea of metadata ownership is therefore increasingly anathema to a community that believes that information wants to be free. For OCLC to place stipulations on the use of WorldCat records is to claim a sort of ownership to the records themselves. The indignation expressed in comments to the article highlight the conflict of OCLC’s business model and the mission of libraries to disseminate information openly and freely – as well as the fact that it was individual libraries that created the records in the first place. As Glenn Bunton, Head of Systems Development at Old Dominion University Libraries notes, “In the end, the heart of the issue lies in the conflict between a commercial, economically driven organization (OCLC) and non-commercial, service driven organizations (libraries).” Though we tend to think of OCLC as an indispensable and altruistic partner in our noble information dissemination efforts, issues such as these make it clear that’s not quite the case.